Coca-Cola Takes Plastic Weight Off Bottles as Part of Sustainable Packaging Strategy
The Coca‑Cola Company is now using less plastic across its beverage offerings in the U.S. and Canada.
The company has introduced lighter-weight bottles for its sparkling beverages, part of its goal of creating a circular economy through packaging. These include the 12-, 16.9- and 20-oz. sizes of Coca-Cola, Sprite, and Fanta.
Coca-Cola is also testing this approach to its two-liter and 24-oz. PET bottles. The company’s PET bottles are created by injecting warmed liquid resin into preformed tubes that are then inflated into bottle molds.
The rollout will occur throughout 2024, reducing the use of new plastic by the equivalent of about 800 million bottles in 2025 compared to 2024.
Minute Maid Refreshments and Aguas Frescas will also feature new shapes with fewer raw materials being used, and the still beverages category has transitioned from hot fill to aseptic processing which also requires less plastic and energy.
In just a year, the company expects to reduce carbon emissions in the equivalent amount of taking more than 17,000 cars off the road for one year via these manufacturing initiatives. These efforts align with Coca-Cola’s goal of creating all-recyclable packaging by 2025 and 50% recycled content by 2030.
A 10-Year Timeline on Sustainability Efforts
Alejandro Santamaria, senior director for global packaging development and innovation at the company, said the current innovation allowed the company to progress after stalling on its plastic reduction efforts with the previous designs, which incrementally reduced from 27 to 21 grams over the last 10 years.
“Our breakthrough innovations in modeling technology, which reduce the weight of our bottles to 18.5 grams, represent a major step in reducing the amount of materials used while preserving the durability and functionality of our packaging and, most importantly, the quality and taste standards of our beverages,” said Santamaria.
The key, he said, was finding a way to reduce plastic without compromising quality, a much more complicated process when needing to maintain specific carbonation levels to preserve the taste of sparkling beverages.
“We intentionally started with our highest-selling SKUs,” Santamaria said. “And we are not leaving any rock unturned when it comes to reducing our per-package use of PET material.”
Coca-Cola has been boosting recyclability on the marketing front of packaging as well. Earlier this year, the company was piloting a label-less Sprite bottle that combined technologies to allow a sustainable single-unit bottle to be sold in-store.
Other recent changes to recyclable packaging include changing Sprite bottles from green to clear plastic to improve efforts, as well as introducing caps attached to bottles to reduce the potential for littering.
